


Strictly Ballroom

by Merixcil



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Declarations Of Love, M/M, Mentions of past unpleasantness, Self-Discovery, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 19:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10815282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Bruce and Joker go about things in entirely the wrong way





	Strictly Ballroom

**Author's Note:**

> There is brief mention of Joker having done some pretty nasty things in this (including murder and cannibalism). It's a blink and you'll miss it thing, but if you think it might upset you then you might wanna give this one a miss.

They’re taking it too slow, or too fast, depending on which way you look at it. Bruce had hundreds of photos of The Joker stored on the batcave computer system years before he ever considered it might be an invasion of privacy. He doesn’t realise how it looks until the clown is trawling through the archives via the batmobile, laughing in disbelief at just how much of his life has been catalogued with and without him knowing.

“I knew you felt the same way.”

Bruce sniffs, fires up the engines. He isn’t going to ask how Joker managed to hack his system so fast, because he’s stopped asking him how he manages the impossible. He’s thinking about making it an official bat family policy: never show weakness in front of The Joker. Incredulity is weakness.

The Joker feeds off the stunned expressions of bystanders. He lives exclusively for his bat but rage and vengeance won’t sustain him forever.

“Don’t suppose you remember what you were so angry about?” Bruce asks, half-heartedly. Violating policy is his privilege as the pater familias.

They have never kissed in the rain, never painted town red. Joker has never made Bruce laugh, not properly, not yet. That will all come with time, from taking things far too slow. This is the part where everything is excruciatingly fast. Joker slipping an arm through Bruce’s that has not been invited and isn’t welcome.

“You ever hear the one about the modern Prometheus?”

Joker’s fingers are uncomfortably tight on Bruce’s bicep. There’s danger flashing in his eyes, the way there always is. He will not be dislodged without a fight.

Back at Gotham Academy, Frankenstien had been mandatory reading for ninth graders. Bruce tries to remember details beyond the great hulking monster that had dominated the landscape of the story, but all he can think about are fingers slipping through his and the sharp stench of acid that had taken weeks to get out of his suit.

It’s all far too close to the bone, so Bruce punches Joker hard enough to shatter his cheekbone and takes him to the GCPD. Gordon’s men can’t hold him any more than Arkham, but it feels better than leaving the city to his mercy.

For the sake of Batman, Bruce tracks detail like a shark follows blood. He closes his eyes and sees perfect 3D renderings of every grotty little corner of Gotham, and he loves it. He recalls the faces of villains fought time and time again in similar fashion, but he doesn’t love them. Not one single soul. Or at least, he thinks he doesn’t and he’s trying very hard to take this as slow as possible.

It only makes sense that Joker would be the first of them to cut to the chase. “Let’s get married,” he says, slipping the pin from a grenade over the third finger on Bruce’s left hand.

The grenade goes flying, across the road and into a residential building. Twelve people die and by the time Batman is done saving everyone else, The Joker is long gone. Bruce will hear laughter in his nightmares for the rest of his life, even after all the waiting and the egg shells neither of them realise they’re walking on.

“You killed Jason.” Bruce says as his back hits the wall.

Joker shrugs, “he got better.”

“You crippled Barbara.”

“Last time I checked, the little rodent spawn was doing better than ever without her legs.”

“What you did to Gordon-”

“Shh, love.” The Joker’s voice is soft, quiet. If he weren’t standing so close it would be impossible for Bruce to hear him, or to see the way his makeup’s slipped and the colour on his lips isn’t quite even.

It’s probably because of the rain. Falling in sheets that drive even the hardiest Gothamites off the streets. Bruce is used to working in these conditions, barely notices how wet his skin is but resents the extra weight where the water soaks into his cape.

A year ago ago, fingers slipped through his and the smell of acid burnt a hole in the back of his brain. His archive of photos has yet to adequately reflect his obsession, but The Joker has asked Bruce to marry him.

Last night Bruce dreamt of wedding the Joker. Of opening his mouth to speak his vows and finding no words on his tongue. So he had laughed and laughed and laughed, and The Joker had laughed with him, and he had woken up with the uncomfortable suspicion that he had liked it.

All of this is far too fast, but there’s no one there to hold him back but himself. Bruce kisses Joker, pulling him close and wrapping him in his sodden cape. He tells himself he’s still angry with the clown, but he already knows he’s lying to himself.

He already knows that Joker tastes like drug store lipstick and gin. He already knows he’s going to build a database on this man so large, it puts the Pentagon servers to shame.

“There we go!” Joker smacks his lip, beaming, “was that so hard?” He’s holding the detonator to a bomb hidden somewhere in the subway system in his right hand. It’s the middle of the day and Bruce hates being seen like this in broad daylight.

People are going to die, people have already died. There’s no consistency to what Joker is doing. Piling up bodies, seemingly at random and sending videos that should demand ransom but deteriorate into raucous laughter before he can get to the point.

“What the hell does he want?” Jim Gordon whispers, well and truly stumped for the first time in his career. The Batman can offer no advice, and he knows more about Joker than anyone.

So he does the only thing he can think to do: present himself before the city and hope his quarry comes to him.

Joker cooperates admirably, “that really wasn’t so hard.”

He hits the button on the detonator and three explosions erupt in canon across the city. Hard enough to shake the very earth and send ripples out across Gotham harbour.

People die, in an hour Bruce is going to learn exactly how many but for now he stares The Joker down in disbelief. It has been years since they stood wrapped in the same sodden cape, oblivious to the rest of the world. The air between them has grown stagnant and almost impossible to shift.

If he were being generous, Bruce might say he was impressed with his foe’s resolve. For sticking it out for so many years and for always finding new ways to catch Batman off guard. If he were being honest he would say that he still dreams about laughter, and he still thinks about the bones of Joker’s hips lying just below the skin under his hands.

“It’s not your fault.” Gordon says, when Batman doesn’t catch The Joker this time round.

Except it is the Batman’s fault. The Batman hesitated, took things too slow. He has forgotten the feel of life flying past him too fast to catch, he wants that back.

Bruce accepts flowers in lime green and deep indigo, from an address he’s never heard of and a name he doesn’t know. They make the batcave smell like frying bacon and every day, one of them explodes.

“So like…are you testing them or…” Dick eyes the vase with suspicion, it takes Bruce a moment to remember that that’s the logical reaction here.

He doesn’t know why he’s keeping them, except that at the time it had seemed more fun than slamming the door and trying to shut the game down before it could really begin. Just for a moment, it was good to let the world speed up around him.

Dick pulls a face, angry that he never gets a straight answer about anything, if he gets an answer at all.

“Did you like the flowers?” Joker asks, checking his reflection in the tinted glass of Bruce’s limo and swiping at a stray speck of lipstick.

Bruce’s date should have been here an hour ago, he doesn’t doubt that Joker knows where she is. He’s not going to ask though, because official bat family policy forbids him from doing so. He imagines that she’s bound and gagged somewhere, already beyond help and terrified. She will die in agony, and the principal of the thing makes his blood boil, but on a personal level he doesn’t care.

It’s hard to give a shit about anything much when Joker is all done up in a tailcoat tailored so close to his ribcage it hugs him like a second skin, pinstripe trousers stretching out the long lines of his legs. He’s all in black and white tonight, which only goes to make the green of his hair, carefully gelled into a neat side parting, and the red of his lips stand out all the more. Bruce is rooted to the spot, thinking about the way the rain sticks the batsuit to his skin, about the shine of a grenade pin against the black of his gloves.

He needs a date, and Joker is right there. Cameras trail Bruce Wayne where ever he goes like a plague of locusts, but tonight the people part to let him by.

Only it’s not him they’re stepping aside for. The look at Joker like he is the God of death, and Joker’s eyes flash with a malicious glee that tells them they are right to fear him.

Over dinner, Joker regales Bruce with stories of bodies cut to ribbons, children choking on their own blood, the smell of human flesh frying in the kitchen. Bruce carefully doesn’t listen too hard to anything he’s saying, unsure if he’s making anything up but unwilling to put it past him. Instead he focuses on the way the fire in Joker’s form seems to soften.

He’s so excited to be here, telling his bat how he does what he loves. He’s willing to be a little bit less evil, just for tonight, for the sake of speeding things along.

The next morning, a pretty young woman with a promising modelling career shows up dead on the doorstep of Wayne Manor. The police conduct a full investigation, of which Bruce is the prime suspect, and no one seems to notice that Batman’s awfully quiet until the trial is done.

Joker laughs at that, “people are so stupid.” He’s got a knife to Bruce’s throat and nothing about him is soft.

It’s sort of like the rain and sort of like the grenade and sort of like dreams of high pitched laughter, too all-encompassing to escape. Bruce lets the scene play out properly, with a fist fight and few unpreventable deaths, followed by The Joker leaving the scene in handcuffs.

Bruce notices the dirty look on the clown’s face when he looks to Batman. Hurt, that after all this time it should be so difficult to take what they both want.

They step together, on the lawn at Arkham when Joker is in the process of escaping. Bruce reaches out to take his hand and fingers fall through his. Not the time, or the place. They have spent too long getting to this point, or they’re both taking liberties that they’re not ready for.

From the top of Gotham, Joker looks down and sees a world driven mad on chaos. The ever present figure of the unknown corrupting any possible understanding of the world, rendering precedent and construct at best unnecessary and at worse a farce.

Below the lawns of the rich suburbs, Batman looks up and sees a world built on rules and hope. Both are capable of stretching to catch the flaws in the system. The universe is comprised of immutable facts, and every unexplained phenomena is just a question begging for an answer.

Bruce has an answer. He doesn’t like it.

“Something on your mind, Batsy?” Joker asks. He’s fiddling with a switch blade, eyeing Bruce up like he’s not sure if he wants to run or fight.

The sun is setting over Gotham. They are somewhere down by the docks, where the piers have started to crumble and the shining splendour of a major world city feels a thousand light years away.

Bruce opens his mouth to speak, for a moment he thinks he’s going to laugh. It’s far too soon for him to be making grand gestures like this, and it’s taken far too long to get here.

“I love you. I think.”

Joker’s face doesn’t move, he doesn’t even flinch. Just keeps on fiddling with the knife, the soft swish of the blade leaving its casing setting Bruce’s nerves on edge. “But of course, darling. What do you think we’ve been doing all these years?”

Sometimes, Bruce dreams of fingers holding firm against his own. Rising up out of the filth to stand on solid ground. It’s a ridiculous notion, and even in a state on unconscious he laughs it down. If he strains his ears, the laughter sounds like wedding vows, but they’re a long way off that.

**Author's Note:**

> Eeeehhh I minorly hecked the timeline for the sake of a dramatic make out scene. Sue me. 
> 
> Comments are love! Come find me on [tumblr](http://jeffersonhairpie.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/chadfuture_) :)


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